Biographical Sketch of Albert G. Patrick

Albert G. Patrick, of Jefferson and Calhoun counties, Kansas, was one of the free-state leaders and, although he finally died full of years and honor, had a most narrow escape from death in the most exciting period of the border troubles. He was an Indiana native, born at Salem, Washington County, in 1824, and a settler at Leavenworth, February 18, 1856. He wrote an account of the robbery and stuffing of the ballot box in the Currler-Beck contest for a seat in the Council, which was published in an Indiana paper and aroused the men of the town. In the summer of 1856 he was taken prisoner by his enemies and delivered to Captain Miller, who took him to Lecompton. There he was court-martialed and ordered to be shot as a spy; was taken out to an open prairie and placed before twelve picked markamen. Realizing his extremity, he tried the virtue of the Masonie sign of distress; it was successful, and two days later he was delivered to Governor Woodson, at Lecompton, where he was placed under guard with five or six other political prisouers. Finally he was set at liberty and proceeded to Lawrence. He joined Captain Wright’s Stranger Creek Company and participated in the Hickory Point engagement; with others, he was eaptured by United States troops and sent to Lecompton, where he was held by Governor Geary under indictment for murder, but was acquitted. In the summer of 1857, under the Topeka Movement, he was elected clerk of the Supreme Court, and in the fall of that year a member of the Council. Although a free-state man, he was elected to the Senate under the Lecompton constitution in January, 1858. In 1867 he was elected to the Legislature from Marshall County. He moved to Jefferson County in 1868, and in the following year was elected clerk, completing his term of two years. Subsequently, for some time, he conducted the Valley Falls New Era. Mr. Patrick’s death occurred at Oskaloosa, February 10, 1903.